


Dawnbreak

by Miso



Series: A War He Can't Forget [14]
Category: SCTV (Canada TV)
Genre: (worry not no one dies but an attempt is mentioned), Flash Forward, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Old Married Couple, Post-Canon, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 19:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11214303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miso/pseuds/Miso
Summary: Earl, woken by the morning sun, muses on his life with Floyd.





	Dawnbreak

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this instead of sleeping the night before a dentist appointment. i make excellent life choices. :P set in the present day. earl and floyd have retired and moved to key west, florida, to be old and doofy together and honestly god bless them they are pure and good. a little flash-forward to what the future holds for these two once floyd gets the help he needs! (but he's got a low point to hit first and i apologize.)

Dawn breaking over the ocean. A ray of sunlight streaming through the window, creeping across the floor. I let out a quiet moan as the light hits my eyes, shielding them from the sun's untimely arrival. Outside, I hear birds singing, greeting the morning cheerfully, as the waves crash against the shore and the sea breeze rustles the palm trees.

I have no interest in greeting the day with them. I'm quite content where I am. I turn over in my husband's arms, smiling warmly as I'm greeted not with blinding Florida sun but my beloved's face. He stirs slightly, but doesn't wake, which is fine by me. It gives me time to admire him, contemplate how godawful lucky I've gotten. I caress his cheek gently, sleepily, feeling the stubble that apparently grew overnight tickling my palm. He says he looks in the mirror and doesn't see what I see. He sees his father. He sees graying hair and wrinkles and bags under his eyes that can't be slept away. He sees a softening, aging body and the dreaded _liver spots_ that he couldn't keep away despite his best efforts.

I see my husband. I see years of experience feeding into a gentle wisdom. I see the man I love, the man I've loved for 40 years, with hazel eyes that turn gold in the right light. I see a man who went through Hell and came back slightly singed but alive. As he dozes beside me, I run my fingertips over the scars that dot his complexion. One on his shoulder from a mishap in the army ("no, I didn't get shot," he's assured me about 20 times). A particularly impressive one just under his chin that he's never really talked about, and I can only assume was the result of his father's ire. Little circular, almost invisible scars dotting his forearms from when he'd pick at his skin under duress, one or two from snuffing out cigarettes on purpose or otherwise on himself (I didn't dare ask).

He looks at himself and sees someone who doesn't deserve the happiness he's achieved. He tells me over and over he doesn't deserve me, but he's been telling me that for decades. If anything, I'm the one that doesn't deserve him. I was terrified, when he got to a point in recovery that he was more self-sufficient, he'd drop me like the bad habits he was weaning himself off of. If anything, however, it made us closer. When he stopped drowning his emotions and pain in whiskey, he learned how to talk about it instead. When he stopped soaking his lungs in nicotine and tar to calm an impending anxiety attack, he learned his favorite way of warding them off was to spend time doing nothing of importance with me- menial house chores, vegging out on the couch, talking about unimportant nonsense that impacted nothing.

I brush a lock of hair away from his face delicately, careful not to wake him. He sighs softly, but stays asleep. It's nice to see him so at peace. When we were younger, I'd wake in the middle of the night to him twitching, talking, panicking in his sleep, reliving the nightmares he lived through as a child and in Vietnam as an impressionable young man who just wanted to make his family proud. Those were the good nights. On the bad nights, I'd find him in the living room, or the guest room, or outside, curled into a ball, occasionally clutching a knife, dissociated and afraid someone or something was out for him. The really bad nights, I couldn't catch him before he flew into the arms of his old buddy Jack Daniels. Those were the nights I'd dry his tears and hold his hair while he puked up most of the alcohol in his body and tell him I loved him before putting him back to bed to sleep it off.

I kiss his forehead gently as a particularly unpleasant memory barges into my head. He doesn't really remember much of it- makes sense, considering he was unconscious for most of the ordeal- but I'll never forget coming home to an array of empty prescription and liquor bottles and a laconic note.

_You tried. I'm sorry. I love you._

Some nights those seven words echo in my brain and won't let me sleep. I shudder at the memory of sitting in the hospital waiting room and crying into the shoulders of Bobby Bittman and Sammy Maudlin, telling them how much I loved him and I didn't know what happened and oh god what was I supposed to do if he didn't make it. That was when I realized I needed him as much as he needed me. Maybe more.

I did something I hadn't done in years during those long, painful weeks he languished in both a standard hospital and a mental one, as soon as the doctors were sure his body could recover. I drove to the nearest temple and prayed. I'd never felt a connection to any religion. Not my father's family's Christianity nor my mother's family's Judaism, but I didn't know what else to do. What do you do when the best thing that ever happened to you just tried to off himself and now he's sitting in a hospital where you can't do jack shit to help?

I take a deep, shaky breath and focus on the here and now. He's here. He's alive. He's asleep, in my arms, in Key West. We're retired. He's a few days away from his _seventy-sixth_ birthday. Seventy-six! If you'd have told him he was going to live to see this 35 years ago, he wouldn't have believed you. Tell you the truth, I'm not sure I would have, either. Not with how determined he seemed to be to self-destruct, to tear himself down to pieces.

He yawns and stirs in my arms. Honey eyes blink open, blearily, and I smile a little. "Good morning," I whisper, kissing his forehead again. He grunts quietly and scratches his head, sitting up to stretch. I hear his joints crack and I can't help but smile a little. We're getting old. No denying it. At least we get to do it together.

"What time is it...?" He asks, in that hoarse morning voice I've always loved. "How long have you been awake?"

"I dunno. The sun in my eyes woke me up. I haven't been up that long." He glances over my shoulder at the clock and lays back down. "Must be early."

"Mmmh. Way too early." He yawns again, pulls the blankets over us, and turns over, his back to me. "Go back to sleep."

I smile again as I scoot close to him and wrap my arm over his waist. Years ago, he never would have let me do this. He used to feel like he had to protect me, guard me. He's let the ice around his heart melt a little. He's okay with being protected every now and then these days. "I love you, Floyd," I whisper into the nape of his neck. He shudders imperceptibly (I can just hear his snarky remark- "jeez, haven't felt anything down there in a while") as my lips ghost over his skin. The smile on his face is almost audible.

"Love you, too, Earl."

As my eyelids drift shut, he maneuvers his arm so his hand covers mine. His breathing slows and steadies again. Knowing he's asleep, he's safe, I let myself follow him back into slumber.

The day can wait. As the birds cheerily greet the sun, I prefer to doze beside the man I love.


End file.
